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<title>The Gutenprint FAQ</title>
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<h2>Gutenprint FAQ</h2>

<ol>

<p><li><h3>Is it only for Gimp?</h3>

<p>No, it can be used for many printing needs. Gimp-print started out
as a driver for The Gimp, the well known image manipulation program.
Early in development versions for Ghostscript and later CUPS were
added.  The emphasis is still on quality color printing, though
performance gets a lot of attention these days.

<p><li><h3>I cannot install it, it complains about missing Gimp files</h3>

<ul>

<p><li>If you have the Gimp installed on your system, you probably
have the user package, but not the development package, installed.
You will need to install the latter from your installation media; it's
usually named gimp-devel.

<p><li>If you do have the Gimp installed, and you've installed the
gimp-devel package, you may also need to install the gtk-devel and
glib-devel packages.

<p><li>If you've installed the Gimp from source, you may need to run
<tt>ldconfig</tt> as root.  The installation procedure for the Gimp
doesn't run ldconfig, which is needed on many systems to tell the
system about the shared libraries that are installed.  If you don't
understand this, don't worry; just do it.  If you're nervous about
doing that, reboot.

<p><li>If you don't have the Gimp installed on your system, and just
want to compile Gutenprint for CUPS (for example), you need to pass
<tt>configure</tt> the option <tt>--with-gimp=no</tt>, so it won't try
to look for the Gimp and fail.

</ul>

<p><li><h3>What is the difference between B/W, Line art, solid color and
Photo mode (or ImageType in Ghostscript)?</h3>

<p>Photo mode does a lot of work to make colors as similar to screen
presentation as possible.  This takes time.  Line art is faster, but
colors may be off.  Solid Colors is somewhere in between.  B/W mode
does not use color ink when printing, and is much faster.

<p><li><h3>I selected my printer and it doesn't work at all!</h3>

<p>Please check your printing system (lpd, CUPS, LPRng, etc.)
configuration.  You may also have a problem with your parallel port
or USB connection, so take a look at <tt>/var/log/messages</tt> (or
wherever your system logs are kept).

<p><li><h3>I selected my printer and it simply feeds paper without
printing</h3>

<p>Many Epson printers (in particular) do this if they encounter an
error in the command stream.  This usually indicates a bug in
Gutenprint; please report it to <a
mailto="gimp-print-devel@sourceforge.net">gimp-print-devel@sourceforge.net</a>
or via the bug tracking system at <a
href="http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net">http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net</a>.
Make sure you report the printer you have and all of the settings that
you used.  But first, triple check that you're using the right printer
model!

<p><li><h3>I selected my printer, and it prints the image badly
distorted, or at completely the wrong place on the page</h3>

<p>This usually indicates a bug in the package.  Please report it as
described above.  Also as described above, make sure you've set the
right printer.

<p><li><h3>I selected the right printer and nonsense, or only part of
the page, gets printed</h3>

<p>Printers for which support just has been added may not have been
tested, as the developers do not have access to the printer. It is
worth trying different settings. For example, change the resolution to
a mainstream value as used on that printer. Also photo mode is better
tested than the optimized versions. When you find out what works and
what doesn't, file a bug report.

<p>One common cause of this is not using "raw" mode when printing from
the Gimp plugin.  Depending upon your printing system, you will need
to use either <tt>-l</tt> (traditional BSD lpd), <tt>-oraw</tt> (CUPS
lpr), or <tt>-d</tt> (most versions of System V lp, including CUPS).
Otherwise the printing system attempts to interpret the output as
something else, and tries to apply a filter to it to convert it to
something else (usually PostScript).

<p>Another less common cause of this (it usually causes other
symptoms, like printing only part of a page) is lack of space
somewhere.  This is most commonly an issue when using the Gimp Print
plugin.  The plugin creates a huge temporary file that gets sent to
the printing system.  The size of the file varies; it's proportional
to the page size and the resolution setting chosen.  Full-page, high
resolution photographs can result in 100 MB of output.  The system may
need to have 2 or 3 copies of this file for short periods of time.  If
your /tmp, /var, or wherever your spooler keeps its temporary files is
too small, you'll have problems.

<p>Finally, problems with your parallel or USB port may be the cause
of problems here.  Certain Epson printers in particular are known to
be very sensitive to the quality of connecting cables, and may have
trouble with long or low quality cables, or USB hubs.  If nothing else
works, and you're certain you've tried everything else, try a better
cable or a direct USB connection.

<p><li><h3>What's up with the HP Deskjet 1200?</h3>

<p>HP had sold two printers with the 1200 model designation. The old
version is 300 DPI and has a heating element to dry the ink. It was
manufactured around 1990.  The new version is of 2000 vintage and has
higher resolution.  The one supported by this package is the new
one???

<p><li><h3>I selected the right printer and the quality is lousy</h3>

<p>Try selecting a different resolution or quality setting. Especially
lower resolutions have a problem putting enough ink on paper. Also,
use Photo mode.  If you find settings that do not work at all (you get
garbage or no output, but other settings work), report these as bugs.
High resolutions should produce a similar (but smoother) result than
medium resolutions. Resolutions under a certain printer dependent
figure are seen as draft-only - for example lower than 360 DPI on
Epsons with standard paper or lower than 300 DPI on HP.

<p>Also make sure that you have the right kind of paper selected.
Selecting plain paper when you're printing on high quality photo paper
is certain to result in a light, grainy image.  Selecting photo paper
when you're printing on plain paper will result in a dark, muddy image
that bleeds through the paper.  There are differences between
different kinds of paper; you may need to tweak the density and color
settings slightly.

<p>In addition, certain printers don't work well on certain kinds of
paper.  Epson printers work well on Epson papers, but don't work
well on many third party papers (particularly the high quality photo
papers made by other vendors).  This isn't a conspiracy to lock you
into their paper, it's because they've formulated the paper and ink to
work well together.

<p>If you use Ghostscript, make sure the Ghostscript resolution is not
set higher than the driver resolution. If it is higher, the driver has
to throw away part of the pixels, leading to uneven strokes in text
and slanted lines with interruptions.

<p><li><h3>How do I start setting options for Ghostscript?</h3>

<p>Please see src/ghost/README for more information.

<p><li><h3><tt>escputil -i</tt> or <tt>escputil -d</tt> fails as follows:</h3>

<p><pre>
% escputil -r /dev/lp0 -i

[ ... license info omitted ... ]

Cannot read from /dev/lp0: Invalid argument
</pre>

<p>You need to rebuild your kernel with CONFIG_PRINTER_READBACK
enabled.

<p><li><h3>I tried to test my Epson printer by 'cat .cshrc > /dev/lp0'
and nothing prints!!!???</h3>

<p>The classic test of printer connectivity -- sending an ASCII file
to it -- doesn't work on many Epson printers out of the box (or after
printing from Windows or Macintosh).  Epson printers from the Stylus
Color 740 and newer use a special "packet mode" in which they do not
recognize standard commands or ASCII text.  They must be sent a
special sequence that takes them out of packet mode.  The command

<p><pre>escputil -u -s -r /dev/lp0</pre>

<p>will take the printer out of packet mode and enable you to print to
it.  Of course, as soon as you've read back status from the printer,
you know it's working (although if you're unable to read status out of
the printer, you might have a different problem; see above).

<p>Printing to your printer from Gutenprint, whether you use the Print
plugin, the CUPS driver, or the Ghostscript driver, will also take the
printer out of packet mode.  But then again, if you successfully print
to your printer, you know it's working, so why worry?  If you're
trying to test your spooler, though, the escputil trick above will do
it.  Just make sure that /dev/lp0 is the right device; if it isn't,
substitute whatever is.

<p><em>Note:</em> this does not apply to printers prior to the 740
(such as the Stylus Photo EX, Stylus Color 850, or anything even
older).  Those printers are always capable of printing ASCII text, and
don't have packet mode.  You can read status from them, but you must
leave off the '-u' option.

<p><li><h3>My USB-connected Epson Stylus printer won't work with
{Free,Net,Open}BSD!</h3>

<p>By default, the BSD device driver for the USB printer device (usually
ulpt0) does a prime, or USB bus reset, when the device is opened.  This
causes the printer to reset itself (one can hear the print head moving back
and forth when this happens) and lose sync.  After this the printer
won't go into graphics mode and instead spews characters all over you
expensive photo paper.  This has been observed on the Stylus Photo
870; it likely exists with other USB-connected Epson Stylus printers.

<p>The fix is to use the "unlpt0" device instead of "ulpt0".  The driver
doesn't perform the USB prime when unlpt is opened.  If this device
doesn't exist on your system you can create it with

<p><pre>mknod unlpt0 c 113 64 root wheel</pre>

<p>in the /dev directory.

<p><li><h3>I try to print with StarOffice and it doesn't print
correctly!</h3>

<p>If you use CUPS, and your prints from StarOffice come out
incorrectly (particularly at low resolution), try the following.  This
assumes a network installation of StarOffice 5.2.

<ol>

<p><li>Ensure that <tt>root</tt> does not have a .Xpdefaults file (if
it does, the procedure below will edit root's version rather than the
system-wide version in <tt>.../office52/share/xp3/Xpdefaults</tt>).

<p><li>As root, start <tt>.../office52/program/spadmin</tt>.  This is
the StarOffice printer administration program.

<p><li>Click on <b>Install New Driver</b>.  For the <b>Driver
directory</b>, select your CUPS PPD directory.  This is usually
<tt>/etc/cups/ppd</tt>.  This should list the names of all of the
drivers you have installed.

<p><li>If there are no drivers visible, you may need to give the .ppd
files names ending in .PS.  The following script will accomplish this:

<p><pre>
# cd /etc/cups/ppd
# for f in * ; do
> ln -s $f `echo $f | sed 's/ppd$/PS/'`
> done
</pre>

<p>Following this, restart <tt>spadmin</tt> and click on <b>Install
New Driver</b>.  When you select your CUPS PPD directory, you will
find the necessary drivers listed.

<p><li>Select the drivers you want StarOffice to know about and click
OK.

<p><li>If you have been using the generic Postscript printer, remove
all of your old queues.

<p><li>Select the appropriate new driver(s) and click <b>Add New
Printer</b>.

<p><li>Select the appropriate printer queue and click <b>Connect</b>
to connect it to the printer queue of your choice.

</ol>

<p>You can now set up appropriate options for this printer.  Note that
you can create multiple queues with different settings, for example
one for draft mode and one for high quality.

<p><li><h3>I'm printing through Samba, and my printer prints
garbage!</h3>

<p>There are a number of Samba configuration issues that cause
problems; a common problem is translation from UNIX newlines (\n) to
Windows newlines (\r\n).  It's important to ensure that sending raw
data, with no translation, to the printer.

</ol>

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